[Wittrs] [quickphilosophy] Early Wittgenstein on Color
- From: "walto" <calhorn@xxxxxxx>
- To: quickphilosophy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:36:10 -0000
Ramsey on Tractarian colors:
Just as the explanation of some apparently necessary truths as tautologies met
with difficulty in the field of colour, so does the explanation of the
remainder as pseudo-propositions. "This blue colour and that," says Mr.
Wittgenstein, "stand in the internal relation of brighter and darker eo ipso.
It is unthinkable that these two objects should not stand in this relation"
(4123). Accordingly a sentence apparently asserting that one named colour is
brighter than another named colour must be a pseudo-proposition; but it is hard
to see how this can be reconciled with the indubitable significance of a
sentence asserting that a described colour is brighter than another, such as
"My cushion at home is brighter than my carpet."
But in this case the difficulty could be completely removed by the supposition
that the physicist is really analysing the meaning of "red"; for his analysis
of a colour comes eventually to a number, such as the length of a wave or what
not, and the difficulty is reduced to that of reconciling the non-significance
of an inequality between two given numbers with the significance of an
inequality between two described numbers, which is evidently somehow possible
on the lines suggested for "I have more than two fingers" above.
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